Optimism: Superchain trading volume hits a new high, why is the OP token still at a low level?

In May 2026, Optimism is in a rare moment of contradiction in the crypto market: its Superchain ecosystem is reaching a peak of over 16 million daily transactions, while its native token, OP, has fallen to around $0.128—down more than 82% from a year ago. A flourishing network paired with a slumping token—this extreme divergence forms the most discussed valuation paradox in today’s crypto market.



## A Thriving Network and a Silent Token

As of May 19, 2026, Gate market data shows OP at $0.12829, down 0.39% over the past 24 hours; down 15.93% over the past 7 days; and down 82.05% over the past year. With a market cap of approximately $275 million, it ranks 175th, and its 24-hour trading volume is $1.7671 million.

On the network side, the Superchain ecosystem has expanded to include member chains such as OP Mainnet, Base, Unichain, Worldchain, Soneium, and GIWA Chain. In April 2026, average daily transactions reached 14.3 million, rising further in May to over 16 million—hitting an all-time high. Total value locked (TVL) is about $5.1 billion, and total on-chain assets are $14.9 billion. While network usage is setting records, the token price is pressing toward historic lows.

## From the OP Stack Alliance to Base’s Exit

- From 2023 to 2024, Optimism leveraged OP Stack to drive a vision of multi-chain co-building for Superchain. Base, the largest member incubated by Coinbase, joined and once pushed the narrative to its peak. OP’s all-time high price reached $4.85.
- On January 30, 2026, a Token House vote passed a buyback proposal: 50% of Superchain’s sequencing net income would be used for monthly off-market buybacks of OP tokens. The approval rate exceeded 84%. The plan was launched in February, with a 12-month pilot execution period.
- On February 18, 2026, Base announced it would exit reliance on OP Stack and move to a fully independent technical architecture. On that same day, the OP token fell by about 20%. Since Base contributed approximately 87% of Superchain’s sequencing revenue, its exit dealt a major blow to Optimism’s revenue structure. Some observers liken this event to Optimism’s “FTX moment.”
- In April 2026, ether.fi completed a full migration to OP Mainnet, bringing in $220 million in TVL, 70,000 active payment cards, and 300,000 user accounts, with zero downtime during the migration. After the migration was completed, the protocol’s TVL grew 57% to $347 million.
- In May 2026, Superchain’s daily transaction volume surpassed 16 million, but the OP price still hovered in the $0.128 range.

## A Quantitative Perspective on the Divergence

OP’s price is down 82.05% over the past year, while Superchain’s transaction volume has surged in the same period—April’s daily average was 14.3 million, and May has already exceeded 16 million. There is a clear divergence between price direction and network usage intensity. From its historical peak ($4.85), OP has cumulatively dropped by about 97.4%, making the decline stand out even among mainstream L2 tokens.

From a token supply perspective, OP’s total supply is 4.294 billion tokens, and its circulating supply continues to increase. By contrast, as of May 11, 2026, ARB’s price is about $0.14. Both top-tier L2 governance tokens are trading in historic low ranges. OP’s drawdown from its peak (above 85%) and ARB’s decline trajectory both reflect the market-wide pressure to reprice L2 governance tokens.

The buyback mechanism provides a tangible demand-side support. 50% of Superchain’s net revenue is used monthly to repurchase OP through off-market trades, and the repurchased tokens are deposited into the Collective treasury. This creates a direct link between token value and network economic activity, but Base’s exit weakens the absolute scale of the buyback funds.

## FTX Moment or the Eve of Rebirth?

Market divisions over OP are extremely sharp.

Some members of the crypto community draw an analogy to “SOL after FTX”—Solana fell into a slump after FTX’s collapse, but ultimately found its way out thanks to ecosystem resilience and its developer base. Supporters argue that although Base’s exit damages the purity of OP’s narrative, the multi-chain Superchain landscape is still expanding: new members such as Ronin and Celo continue to join, and the realization of the buyback proposal has given OP its first real income support.

While Superchain’s transaction volume is huge, most of the activity comes from member chains such as Base and Unichain, which use ETH for gas—meaning economic value does not flow directly to OP holders. As the largest revenue contributor, Base accounts for approximately 87% of Superchain’s sequencing income, and its independent move has significantly shrunk Optimism’s core revenue. A deeper concern is that if Base can go independent, other member chains might follow, making the centrifugal risk for Superchain impossible to ignore.

## Industry Impact Analysis: A Collective Stress Test for L2 Governance Tokens

What OP is going through is not just the volatility of a single project, but a question faced collectively by all L2 governance tokens: when network effects and token value have become separated to this extent, the entire sector must rethink its token economic model.

If buyback mechanisms are proven effective, even if they cannot immediately lift prices, they may encourage more L2 protocols to adopt similar revenue-linked mechanisms, pushing the industry’s token economics model from “governance symbols” toward quasi-equity assets.

Conversely, if prices remain sluggish after buybacks are implemented over the long term, it could severely undermine market confidence in the “governance token plus revenue buyback” paradigm, potentially forcing the industry toward a tighter, more economically bundled model.

For the Superchain ecosystem itself, prolonged low OP prices could weaken its effectiveness as an ecosystem incentive tool and a cooperation bargaining chip, putting it at a disadvantage in multi-chain competition.

## Multi-Scenario Evolution: Three Possible Paths

With the buyback mechanism already in place, the next 12 to 18 months could see the following scenarios:

Scenario 1: Convergent Recovery

Superchain transaction volume stays high or continues to grow. Monthly buybacks steadily siphon circulating supply from the market, and OP’s price gradually converges with network value. Prices won’t surge sharply, but the center of volatility would shift mildly upward. Market sentiment would move from extreme pessimism to cautious “starter positions.” This is currently a relatively higher-probability scenario, but continued monitoring is needed of whether monthly buyback reports are executed as planned and of the pace of revenue recovery after Base’s exit.

Scenario 2: Long-Term Divergence

Transaction growth hits a bottleneck, and sequencing revenue falls short of expectations. The buyback scale is not enough to absorb market sell pressure, and member chains continue to strengthen their independent narratives. OP’s token price continues to trade in the $0.1 to $0.2 range. While Superchain remains a successful network, OP tokens become increasingly sidelined as investment targets, forming a steady state of “hot network, cold token.”

Scenario 3: An Unexpected Catalyst

A major catalyst emerges—for example, core member chains launch economic modules that are deeply bound to OP, or Superchain’s native stablecoins or yield assets experience a surge—leading to nonlinear growth in OP demand. Coupled with supply contraction from buybacks, prices could be repriced far beyond expectations. This scenario has a lower probability, but once triggered, the impact could be far-reaching.

## Conclusion

The phenomenon displayed by Optimism—“historic lowest price alongside historic highest transaction volume”—is a profound repricing challenge during the crypto market’s march toward maturity. The tension between the Superchain’s real demand—more than 10 million transactions per day—and OP’s low price of $0.128 is challenging the underlying logic of Layer 2 token economics. The implementation of the buyback mechanism provides a structural anchor for value recovery, but the revenue shock caused by Base’s exit and the inherent difficulty of capturing value from governance remain issues that still need time to work through. For both the project itself and the broader Ethereum scaling ecosystem, how to truly imprint the network’s prosperity onto token value is the ultimate solution to this valuation paradox.